Tear Drops on Freckles
by Rothery
Summary: He'd made Pepper cry, not intentionally, but that wasn't the point, the point was that she was crying and it was his fault...One-shot ..


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A/N: I'm no doctor so the part with the nosebleed could be totally wrong, I just remember a teacher telling me once how crying builds pressure which can sometimes cause nosebleeds...I had them quite a lot when I was in school, so yeah...

**_I hate the tittle, but couldn't think of anything better..._**_**Anyways hope you enjoy it...**_

**_Italics mean flashbacks_**

_**Disclaimer: I don't own them...**_

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He'd made Pepper cry, not intentionally, but that wasn't the point, the point was that she was crying and it was his fault.

He hated it when Pepper cried, in fact he hated it when any kind of girl cried. That hadn't really stopped him from breaking all those hearts though.

He shifted his weight slightly as his leg started to cramp and couldn't help but think back to the first time Pepper had cried in front of him.

It had been at a party, and not a very good one;

_Boredom had once again gotten the better of him, the guests had been old or older than himself, and therefore not worth his time, and those other few guests that were around the same age as he, well, he'd found them all _blank_. Their petty existence had not been worth a minute of his time._

_It had been a warm day, and so everyone had gathered outside like flies, while he had escaped back inside unnoticed. It wasn't his house, or one of the many houses he owned, in fact he hadn't really paid all that much attention to the details of where, who or what._

_The house was nice, he thought, contemporary, a proper family home, unlike the spacious, cold and empty house he lived in. He felt warm walking through these halls, seeing the pictures lined against the walls, pictures with smiling faces, those rare and wonderful moments caught on film, the types of pictures he didn't have._

_He went into the first room he could find with an unlocked door, not really taking the time to acknowledge what kind of room he'd stepped into, let alone whose it could have been, instead his eyes had been drawn to the legal pad that sat on the desk to his left._

_He snatched it up, removed his blazer and threw it on the floor before he sat down with his back against the wall; one leg lay straight out in front of him, while the other bent at the knee, serving as an okay surface in which to rest the pad._

_For the first time in a long time Tony Stark did not jot down any kind of scientific or mathematic formulas, instead he did the most simplest of things and drew._

_A face to be exact, but not just any face, he drew _her _face._

_He wasn't sure at how much time had passed, only acutely aware that it had as the door to the room he was currently occupying had opened._

_And there she was, standing in front of him, wearing a simple blue dress that hugged her chest, showed off some of her back, and fell to her knees, the white sash around her waist showing whatever curves she had. Her strawberry blonde hair and all its curls fell around her face as she looked at him._

_And then she cried. She just stood there and cried; her hands hanging by her sides, her perfect shoulders shaking with every new sob that escaped her throat. She didn't try to hide her face like most girls would've done, but he doubted that she even cared._

_The freckles that peppered across her nose and cheeks were now stained with tears._

If her hair,_ he thought, _were put up in braids she'd be a perfect copy Pippi Longstocking_. Not that he knew who Pippi Longstocking was or anything..._

_He scrambled to his feet, dropping the legal pad on top of his discarded blazer, feeling slightly uncomfortable that she was crying in front of him._

_He hated it when girls cried._

_"Don't cry, _please_." He said knowing that there was only a 0.1% chance that she would in fact stop crying, but unsure of what else he was supposed to do. "_Please_, please don't cry," he said again, "I hate it when girls cry."_

_She did not stop crying, if anything he'd made it worse._

_He didn't really need to think very hard about what or rather who had made her so upset. People of their age groups could be so very cruel, critical of every single detail. They'd teased her about her height and lack of curves, laughed at her freckles, someone had even said she'd looked like a boy in a dress, something he disagreed with entirely, he'd even overheard quite a few of their jokes about her extraordinary hair colour._

_He noticed how red her cheeks were suddenly getting, the freckles almost invisible now, and began thinking about the increase in blood pressure that came with long session of fierce crying, he knew that it would build up until the capillaries closest to the skin would burst, in order to eliminate some of the extra pressure, this he knew resulted in-_

_"_Oh God_, your nose is bleeding!" he exclaimed, suddenly remembering the handkerchief in his blazer pocket, he scooped up the jacket, the legal pad sliding under the bed, and hunted down the white handkerchief._

_He walked over to her and pressed the square of material to her nose, pinching her nostrils between his fingers, she didn't pull back._

_It wasn't until a few minutes later when adult after adult poured into the room, each one demanding to know what was going on. He'd stammered quite a bit, he didn't really know what was going on either, not really anyways._

_"Ididntdoanything," he cried "it wasn't me, I didn't do-" _SLAP!_ His cheek burnt, the handkerchief he'd been holding against her nose drifted to the floor, he wondered for a second if her nose had stopped bleeding as a few of her curls followed the airflow of which the hand that had slapped him had created, tickling his face._

_He didn't dare move, his bangs now coming to rest on his forehead, he felt his sight blur as tears formed in his eyes, "I didn't do anything." He said again slower this time, barely in a whisper. He knew they probably wouldn't believe him, it wouldn't have been the first time he'd made a girl cry, that's why he hated it so much._

At least she's stopped crying_, Tony thought, the room silent apart from a few deep breaths the girl took to steady herself before being ushered out of the room._

_"Oh _Virginia_," he heard a woman say, "There's blood on your dress."_

Virginia.

_There was only one man in the room when he finally looked up, his face expressionless, cold Tony thought. He didn't bother to try and justify himself again, the man in front of him wouldn't have believed him anyway._

_"Get in the car, Tony" Howard Stark said sternly, Tony nodded and walked past his father defeated._

_It wasn't until he'd gone to open the car door that he'd turned around to find her standing in front of him again._

_She smiled this time, and kissed his cheek, "Thank you" she'd said before running off again, the legal pad held securely in her arms, no doubt protecting his portrait of her._

_A portrait of her, _Virginia_: smiling._

It was different this time, he mused, because this time it really was his fault.

"Pep, please don't cry, you know I hate it when girls cry."

She looked down at him then, choking back a chuckle, a smile shining through the tears, she knelt down on the floor in front of him, looking him directly in the eye.

He took her face in his hands and wiped away her tears with his thumbs, "You'll get a nose bleed if you don't." He said watching her as she looked down at the space between them, her smile grew bigger. She bit her lip as she looked at him again, she laughed.

Her laugh, to him, was the most beautiful sound in the world.

"Yes!" she said suddenly, her eyes shining, "Yes, a thousand times yes. I will marry you Tony Stark!"

He pulled her face to his then and kissed her, and for a brief moment wondered if she still had the portrait he drew for her.

FIN

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_**A/N: Tony is sixteen/seventeen years old in the 'flashback' of this story, and Pepper is around thirteen going on fourteen which is why I mention her 'looking like a boy in a dress' because I figure that Pepper would be a late developer, in the few paragrahs at the very begining and at the very end they are adults, just to clear up any confusion...So reviews anyone? **_


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